Transcription
Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. [Music] Thanks be to him, and praise his name, for the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100, verses 4 to 5. [Music]
Ah, being grateful is better than not being grateful, isn't it? Oh, but we also just finished Thanksgiving, and there is a reality that being grateful at times is difficult because people are difficult. Oh, and it's not just that people are difficult; it's that the way that their difficult affects us, right? I mean, they can be difficult—that's fine. For instance, you're driving on the freeway; someone speeds past you—that's fine. It's when they pull in front of you and slow down, right? Yet we hit this series on gratitude, and I get to wrap it up with gratitude given how can we live like this? How can we not just—how can I not get to the end of this message and say, “So be more grateful; try to have a discipline of gratitude?” No, how can we just become more grateful, even with difficult people? I think one is just to choose it.
So, for a second, I'm going to pull a Mr. Rogers on us and take a minute, and I want you just to consider all the people, both the good moments and even the difficult ones, that have actually brought you to the place you're at today. I want you to think through, with a heart of gratitude, the people that have gotten you here today. Take a minute. Amen. How do you feel? Better? No wonder Paul commands this in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, beginning in verse 16. He says this: “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This—any—and he’s wondering what God’s will for your life is. Anyone? Anyone? It says this: “So rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” This is it. We want God’s will in the specifics of our life, yet God goes, “Here’s what I want you to do in the midst of all the specifics: I want you to rejoice always, pray continually, and give thanks in all circumstances.” Do you hear the “always,” all the time? So, and it’s difficult, right? Not just because of difficult people, but also how about difficult circumstances?
And I love that God doesn’t ask us just to ignore them in order to live out this passage. In fact, I’m going to tell you what’s happened to me, and I have to say it’s just wild since last time I was here at Willow. Are you ready for this? I was driving on the freeway, and out of nowhere, a straight piece of wood comes up, flies, crashes into the grill of my car, scratches the entire front, smashes the windshield, and then gets caught on the top of my car. That was a rough day. A week later, my car is broken into in my driveway; my wallet is stolen because I left it in there. Every credit card, every gift card, cash—someone’s like, “No,” yes. We found out some really potentially crummy news on someone in our family with a medical diagnosis. We haven’t heard yet, but that—oh, and then you know what else? I got an email from an older friend of mine, an elderly woman, that said this: “Hey, my—um, I can’t get my credit cards to work, um, and it’s my friend’s birthday, and I want to send her a birthday gift. Can you send it for her—send it for me on my behalf through Amazon?” I’m like, “Of course.” I write back, like, “Of course.” She’s like, “Great, here’s the email, here’s the note to write.” It’s like, “Many blessings, and if you could make it for 250…” I’m like, “Of course,” but I mean, that’s generous, but wow, you love your friends. I’m one, right? And I’m like, “Hey, I sent off the gift card. I’m like, she’ll just drop off a check, I’m sure.” We didn’t talk about how she, you know…and then I got an email like a few minutes later: “Thank you so much, blessings to you…um, it wasn’t enough. Can you send more?” I’m like, “It was a scam! I fell for one of the internet scams that I warned my parents about! I fell for one, guys!” What a month! And yet you want to know what God’s will for—for my life in this month is? Rejoice always, pray continually…I couldn’t believe it. I’ve been studying this since I left. I always know what I’m speaking on next, and so the day after I finish a message, I’m like, “All right, let’s start meditating,” and then everything kept happening. It almost felt like the Lord’s like, “You think the message will be easy?” So what do we do when life’s not fair, right? I hear that phrase a lot. Thankfully, my parents actually told it to me a lot, too. “Dad, why?” “Because life’s not fair.” I’m like, “Okay.” Let me tell you, this is what I’ve realized in studying this passage: there’s two ways of looking at that exact same statement, because it’s true, life is not fair. And the first way of looking at “life’s not fair,” and this is the general way that we say it, we say, “Life’s not fair,” why? Because we expect our life to be simple and easy, and life to go our way, right? So we say these phrases like, “Of course, that would happen to me.” Have you said something like that? Because we think like, “Oh, life’s not fair, but like God’s out for me, and so of course this is another thing that would happen to me,” and “life’s not fair because I’m entitled to something better. I’m entitled to health. I’m entitled to the stray wood hitting someone else’s car.” Who sins more? Oh, by the way, I found it really interesting when I called the people about the straight pieces with my insurance; they referred to it as an “act of God.” And when I called Amazon about the scam, the gal laughed. She’s like, “We’ll call you back.” Life’s not fair, and if you’re expecting a safe and easy life, you’ll be disappointed a lot, and it’s going to be really hard for you to live God’s will for your life—to be grateful in all circumstances. But here’s what I found: that there’s a second way of looking at that exact same phrase, because it’s true, life’s not fair. And here’s what it is: you got to go back to our origin. I mean, in Genesis, chapter 2, verse 7, it says, “The Lord formed the man of the dust.” This is our anthropology. We are from the dust. And then, post-fall, 3:19, it says, “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” because suddenly death enters into the story, the consequence of sin. So dust—the ground. In fact, our word “humility” comes from the Latin word “foreground,” “humus.” That’s where we get the word “humility.” See, when we recognize we’re in this position, down low, it’s much easier to look up and see absolutely everything as a gift—life that we have. It’s not fair. Do you know what I deserve? The ground—nothing. And I love that the way that God even made our bodies—it’s like constant reminders. Did you know that our heart beats a hundred thousand times a day? It’s like this constant reminder, if only we just sit and rest in it—gift. And so we have to address how we look at this life—gift. It’s still going—gift. How do we get there? How do we get to this humble way of living? Because here’s the deal: when you see everything as a gift, if someone gives you a gift, what’s the natural response? You say, “What?” See, gratitude is the byproduct; it’s the byproduct. You do it when you see life as a gift. And so how do we do this? So life’s not fair, and it’s not this type of “not fair” that leads us to feel entitled to a safe and easy and comfortable and healthy life, but rather, look at “life’s not fair”—everything that we have is a gift. Then, when you look to the life of Jesus and you see that he doesn’t, in fact, give us what we deserve, you’ll see that absolutely everything is grace. Because what is grace? Grace is unmerited favor on your life. I always laugh at those credit card statements that are like, “Get what you deserve.” I’m like, “No, thank you. I actually don’t want what I deserve,” because I deserve to be very far from a perfect and holy and loving God. Yet—gift. Which is why Paul urges the Thessalonian Church to rejoice—one, rejoice always. And by the way, “always” means always. And do you think Paul had to command it if it just happened naturally? No. He knew that it wouldn’t. But also the fact that he commands it means that it’s within our reach to rejoice. Or how about this word: celebrate what God is doing always, which means at times we have to pause and acknowledge that he is doing, and sometimes that means we just have to pause in life. I have a friend that puts a lawn chair on his front porch just to sit there and go, “I just want to sit there and exist because I’ve been gifted with that ability,” and so it just exists. And his kids, like, “What are you doing?” He’s like, “I’m existing; that’s what I’m doing. You want to join me?” They’re like, “No, thanks.” But I asked him in a conversation just last—last Tuesday, said, “Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we just sit and enjoy the gift of living? Why don’t we do that?” And here’s what he said: he said, “We don’t because we’re trying to justify our existence versus recognizing that God already has—not only did he form us, he formed us on purpose, and for that we can rejoice always, because he didn’t just form us once; he’s continuing to form and transform and transform.” So we can rejoice always, but he also knows that we won’t, which is I think why immediately after he gives us this command that feels lofty and almost unattainable, he goes, “Good,” and then, “Make sure you, too, pray continually.” Pray continually. And this has been probably the most significant shift in my own personal life in the past two years since starting further education for me. It’s been this moving from the like twice-a-day prayer with my lists to just praying and doing all of life with him. Because I think we do that, right? We give our list, or we do our thing with the Lord; we have our different like, you know, acronyms that go through the different like gratitude and sin confess—okay, we have all the things that we do, but unfortunately, we kind of limited our time and intimacy with the Father to that one moment, and then we feel like we have to figure out those broken relationships by ourselves, or that person that you think is mad at you that you’re gonna go have a conversation with, and you bear that burden by yourself. Or one thing that you may not know is that—uh, so because I’m getting more education, I do my homework once I put my kids down at night, so I begin homework at 8:30 P.M. every night. It goes till about 10, so that’s like my normal rhythm. The other day, it hit 8:30, the little boys were down, and I went, “I don’t want to do my homework. You know what I want to do? Watch Peacock and an episode of The Office that I’ve already seen.” And here’s the thing: normally in my mind I’d have this moment of like, “Oh, either I do the like really spiritual thing and read my like spiritual formation book that’s going to talk about change and so I can come here and be more effective, or I can just turn off my brain and falsely…” And here’s the—here’s the aha for me: “Pray continually.” Normally, I just make that decision, and it would feel almost like right and wrong or something. And here’s what I did: I went, “Lord, I don’t feel like doing homework today. You know what? I also don’t feel like just talking with you and having like search my heart, and I’m just a little tired. I’m a little tired tonight, and I kind of just want to turn on the show.” You know what? I felt fine. Put on a show, and it was okay. But look at the reason I bring that up: it’s just a small and significant moment to go, “You can actually do all of life with them. He wants to do all of it with you, and he’s going to surprise you because he’s with you in all of it.” We’ve just talked about his faithfulness; his promises are yes, and we went through all of that, right? He’s with you, and he wants to be with you, which is why this invitation is so profound: pray continually. And yet a lot of us don’t, because maybe one of your excuses—and this was mine for a long time—is, “Why pray continually if he already knows everything?” Right? Calvin would argue because of double knowledge. And here’s what he gets out this idea of double knowledge: is because in prayer, what can happen is you can have knowledge of God, yes, but also knowledge of yourself. And you can’t actually grow in God until you grow in deeper awareness of yourself. Now, right off the bat, let me tell you, when I was learning this concept, I thought, “I don’t know if I actually agree with that.” I mean, I even wrote a book called Selfless to think about yourself less, because I thought it’s better for me to walk into a room and not think about myself and just go, “God, who do you want me to see?” And then walk in and just like love other people—love, love, love, love, love. And so then I would walk into church, and of course I’d want to love people, but then I’d also want to learn a lot of knowledge about God—give me knowledge about God, give me knowledge about God. But did you notice those anxieties still continue to creep in, and I try to almost stuff that down and go, “Knowledge of God, knowledge of God. What’s the truth about God?” Here’s what God’s been revealing to me about double knowledge and why praying continually is so significant. Here’s why: because you can sit in church your entire life, and you can know that God is love, and it is not until you consider yourself—which God is really good at searching our heart, because he lives there—and you look at your heart, and he reveals, “Oh, how self-centered I am! That at times I’m just a wretch!” And then watch this: when I see the true reality of myself, the potential of God as love can actually go deeper. Do you see that? If we limit our knowledge of God to just remaining up here, and we never look at self, then there’s not the potential of that knowledge of God to actually go into the place that we need it the most. Do you want to know where you need to know that you’re loved? Not in your performance and church attendance. You need to know you’re loved in your anger—that will surprise you. Double knowledge. And Jesus gets at this in one of the most terrifying verses for me as a little kid: Matthew, chapter 7, verses 21 to 23. This verse is why I think I dedicated my life to Jesus like 15 times in elementary school. It’s this one where Jesus says this: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven. Remember, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons, and in your name perform many miracles, and in your name volunteer and pack Hope Packs?’ But—what a joy—Jesus says this: ‘Though then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoer.’ Did you catch it? He did not say, ‘You never knew me.’ What did he say? ‘I never knew you.’ You didn’t let me know you. Do you know you? Because knowing you is how you’re going to know me, and the places that you don’t actually believe it.” What does this practically look like in prayer? Great. I’m glad you asked. In your brain, Mark, chapter 9, says this, and it’s the prayer of a desperate father. And the desperate father says this—maybe you remember it immediately: “The boy’s father exclaimed, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief.’” Do you hear the double knowledge? When he thinks about God, he goes, “I believe,” and then he thinks about himself, and he goes, “Help me, because I don’t actually believe.” And can I tell you what a freeing prayer that is? At all times: “God, I believe you are love,” and then I look at myself and go, “Man, I’m so desperate for it from other people.” “God, I believe you are sovereign and in control,” and I consider myself: “I’m so worried about my future that I have to have it in my own hands, and I’m drowning.” Anyone else? Do you see the double knowledge? Do you see the freedom of Paul’s invitation? It’s not some obligation of what you have to do; it’s an invitation into the free type of life where you can be fully honest with yourself, but you can be fully honest about yourself to the one who loves you in the midst of it. See, what he’s not asking you to do is simply just pray away your anxiety. He’s going, “Let me use that. Let me use that,” because that one area that brings you the most anxiety is actually the place I want you to know my sovereignty. Open it to me. See, here’s what I think we do: we take our little prayer requests—it’s kind of like these keys—and this is what we do: we take our little prayer requests, and I did this for a very, very long time, and I think we do these like magical prayers where we go, “God, take away my anxiety,” and then when we feel anxious the next day, we wondered about what happened with that prayer. Did we not mean it enough? Did he not care enough? What’s going on? And here’s what I’m realizing is, in this double knowledge, praying continually, knowing God, asking him to search your heart, allowing him to see you, to know you, let you know you—here’s what each prayer becomes: every single thing that you become aware of becomes actually a key that will unlock your heart toward the truth that you need to know. Will go—it—it will go directly into the place you need to know it the most. What if anxiety wasn’t the thing that you needed to shove to the side, but rather the very invitation from Paul to pray continually in it, to allow that to unlock the place that you don’t believe it? And here’s the radical thing: that’s okay. God knows you, and he’s going, “I know. I know that you know that I’m sovereign,” and if you look at your heart, unlock—let that sovereignty enter into that place where you feel the most out of control and feeling the need to control your life. Pray continually: “I believe; help me overcome my unbelief.” And when you see that his love, his pursuit, is not dependent upon your efforts—anyone else feel guilty that they’re not as far along as they should be by now in their faith?—his love is not dependent upon any of it—to the ground, to the dust, humbled by these types of prayers. And when you see and know him there, that’s when Paul prays three: give thanks in all circumstances, because all circumstances can be a key that unlocks a place that you can know him deeper. And notice it does not say, “Give thanks for all circumstances,” because I’m not thankful for all circumstances. How about you? What Paul reminds us is, if we can rejoice always, we can pray continually, and it is possible to give thanks in them, why? Because he is in them. We have to be really careful when it comes to a message like this, because it could be really tempting to want to hear this whole “give thanks,” and then even the act of doing that, of giving thanks, can become another way that we try to convince ourselves that we earn God’s pleasure with us. Have you said these types of things? “Oh, he’s just so disappointed. I can’t. I feel so guilty about my faith.” Here’s why we can give thanks in all circumstances: because you don’t need to obtain favor with God. The moment you gave your life over to Jesus, you put your faith and trust in Jesus, not in yourself. The moment you do that, he and his life obtained everything that your life hadn’t. See, we obtained death; we obtained lowness; he obtained greatness, and he wants to raise us up, and he will be the one to raise us up. We don’t have to pull ourselves up from our bootstraps, which, by the way, is really challenging. I don’t know how you practically can actually do that, but we feel like we try, right? See, here’s what I think: I think the enemy wants to sneak in on this type of message, and he wants to shift our focus from what God has done to what we must do. He even wants to make the entire gratitude series about what you have to do.
In order to make God pleased with you, and here's what I want to tell you: in Christ, if you've given your life over to Christ, ready for this—he already is pleased with you. Would you let that sink in? I believe you're pleased with me; where don't you believe it? Search my heart, Lord. See, the enemy wants to shift your focus away from what God has done, what God is doing, and he wants to shift it to be about what you have to do. You remember this is exactly what happened with Adam and Eve. Do you remember where the serpent said? He said, if you partake in the fruit, you'll be like God, the image of God. If you do this, then here's the truth: they already were. See, the enemy tried to get them to obtain through their work and their effort what God had already given them by grace.
See, I think the reason we're not grateful is because we're tired, we're busy, and we're distracted trying to earn the favor of God and earn the favor of everybody else. And here's the freeing prayer you can pray: "God, I believe you've given me everything I need; help me because I don't live like it." And He goes, "Isn't that a freeing prayer?" Come, enjoy the gift of not having to obtain a thing and trusting that I already have. And even the moments that you don't, I want that truth to sink deeper. I'm going to use all of it; I'm going to use your faith, beautiful praise God; I'm even going to use your lack of faith to be the very thing, through prayer, to take the thing you need to go. And as you go deeper, or as you go lower, as He humbles us to go, we deserve nothing, and then anything you get, watch this—it's grace, it's a gift. Thank you. Gratitude is the byproduct of seeing what God has done and is doing in your life.
And we will get distracted as we go into this Christmas season; we will be distracted if we focus more on what we're doing. But like I said, I started preparing this message—actually, it was on a Friday. I read through the passage: "Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; this is God's will for your life." That I read it for the first time on a Friday afternoon, and I just started meditating on it. It was Saturday that my car was broken into. I literally am sitting on the couch—we do Saturday morning cartoons—and I had my arm around my little guy, and I started getting all the notifications to my phone. I was like, this ping: "Did you try to use this credit card statement over at that place?" I'm like, "No." Ding: "No, my wallet's stolen." You know what? You just know. Am I the only one that's had this happen? You guys are all responsible and know where you left your keys when you walk into a place. Good for you, good for you; be grateful, not all of us have that luxury. But I knew it, and I kind of quietly go outside, and of course, you know how a car is broken into—it's just, it's everywhere, all the stuff. And I went back inside, quiet, totally quiet, and I sat down, and I just—I started to almost laugh: "Give thanks in all circumstances. All right, God, here we go. Okay, this is my inner dialogue. Okay, God, let me give you thanks here; I don't even know how to give thanks here." So I went like this: "Search my heart," and here's what I did—something really interesting because we talk a lot about the fact that it's not a religion, it's a relationship, right? Relationships are two-way. So I opened my heart: "All right, why am I—why am I grateful? Why am I so thankful in this moment?" And He goes, "Remember when you got caught for stealing?" Like, we're not talking about that. I brought that up at Willow like two years ago; we're gonna leave it there. And if you missed that message, good—two years ago I got caught, and that moment actually changed the trajectory of my entire life. It's where I finally understood unmerited favor, when my mom gave me love, when I finally knew I didn't deserve it. And in a moment when I embraced my mom and I said, "Mom, I don't deserve this forgiveness," my dad kindly whispered, "My girl, you never did, and we love you, and we always have loved you, and God loves you, and you've never deserved any of it." And so my mind goes back to that moment, and so then I start going, "God, would you catch them?" But here's the surprise for me: the catching of the people wasn't so that I'd get my stuff back; the catching somehow in that moment became, "I want them to get caught so that they can understand something." And then I started to think because I actually have a camera in my front yard and I could see the two of them, so I started praying, considering them. Now I'm actually crying, praying for the two people that robbed me. My little boy looks over and I'm crying; he's like, "You okay, Mom?" I'm like, "Buddy, your friends really matter." He's like, "What?" And I can only imagine the moment—I can't remember exactly what happened—but I was like desperate for my little guy to choose really good friends because they're—because, right, you're like the average of your five closest friends. And I'm looking at him like, "Buddy, it really—it really matters um, for you to choose friends."
"Um, our car was actually broken into last night, and uh, Mama's wallet was taken, so I'm gonna—I'm gonna have to, you know, it's gonna be okay." He's like, "Did they take all the money? All of our money? All the money we have?" I'm like, "No," and I'm grateful for that. He's like, "But how much?" I'm like, "I don't know, buddy." I was like, "I'm gonna take care of a few things," so I get on my computer. But then I continue just going like, "Man, this is really inconvenient," and guess what? I just talked to him about inconvenience and what a bummer that is. And then it got real personal because here's what the invitation to give thanks in all circumstances was: as I continued to open my heart, I—I thought through everything that was in my wallet, and one thing that was in my wallet was a debit card that had my husband's name on it, and I would use it specifically to buy things from their dad, and I was like, "No," and I got mad, and I'm thankful, and I'm mad, and I love that God can handle both. Oh my God, I'm mad about that one because that was actually really special. I can get a new debit card; I'm gonna get the new credit cards, but I can't get one with his name on it again. And I just brought him my sad, and I'm so thankful that I don't have to be alone in my sad either. Do you know the difference of when someone comes up to you when you're sad and they're just with you? They don't have to say anything; in fact, when they speak it's usually a problem, right? Just presence is so significant, and that's why He's saying, "When you're in my presence, you're going to see everything that I'm doing, and then you're going to want to rejoice; you're going to want to celebrate because this world has a lot of stuff that you don't want to celebrate, but get in this discipline of being with me, and then you're going to rejoice always. And when you're with me, we can talk about everything; pray continually, and as you do, you'll say—you'll see that I'm using absolutely everything. And when you see that, the natural byproduct: thank you." And I love that "thank you" doesn't ignore the pain. Thank you for me in that moment was presence, right in the midst of it. So I walk outside, and I'm just having my angry moment, my sad moment, and I'm lamenting, and I'm there, and I'm looking, and not only—not only is my car a mess, I'm looking, and suddenly on the ground they threw stuff on the ground, and then I looked down, and there was a debit card [Applause]. He's really kind because he just—oh, it's emotional—put it down. Here's the thing: I didn't expect him to do that; it was like shocking. I think it's even weirder because my—my one Christian neighbor walks out her house; she's like, "Hey neighbor, how you doing?" I'm like, "I was robbed, and I'm grateful." She comes across the street; she's like, "What in the world?" I'm like, "I know." I was like, "I'm studying this passage for you, for us; my car was broken into." She's like, "Wait, what?" I'm like, "I'm really grateful," and I'm like holding the car and I'm crying, and she's now crying; we're like having a moment. Gift—that was just a gift. And can I tell you, salvation—it's a total gift. What is gift? Unmerited, unearned. You cannot earn His love; He already has given it. Gift, gift. So what's our role? Oh, humble ourselves with friends. We don't deserve a thing. You don't deserve the people around you, which, by the way, want to know your life. You don't deserve a group of pastors and small groups that ask you questions and really care about the answer. We don't deserve anything. When you see that everything's a gift [Music]. I hope you have this visual: unearned favor, life, friends—is a gift. And when we see it as such, this life is not fair. He has given us himself; He has given us life and purpose here on Earth and throughout all of eternity, if we'd only put our faith and trust in Him and His finished work, and not faith and trust in ourselves to be enough and do enough to earn it enough, because we can't. And here's the good news: you don't have to. Rather, oh, rejoice always. He's in the details, and if you're paying attention, you'll see Him everywhere, everywhere. Rejoice always, celebrate every time you find Him, and pray continually. How, God? I believe—oh, help me, unbelief; help me overcome my unbelief. How? By opening up every area that I don't—you don't have to do anything alone. And when you recognize His presence and His love and His grace, there, the only natural response: Father, I thank You. And even now I pray that we just take a moment and give You thanks for the ways we haven't seen You, that we've been distracted, and I pray that You'd begin to shift our focus from what we must do this week to finding You. So right now, show us what You're up to; search our hearts; what are You doing? What have You already done? [Music] God, I pray that people would notice that we are a grateful people, not because life is easy, but because life is not fair. We worship You for that reason. And all God's children said [Music] [Applause]